On October 4, 2018, shortly after relocating to a West Coast metropolitan area, I attended a worship service celebrating the appointment of a new leader serving a regional church role there. I arrived late, because my hometown baseball team was in the playoffs, and I stopped in nearby pub to watch the end of the game. Several alums of the seminary where I trained were in attendance (at the church, not the pub!), and we naturally gravitated to each other to chat informally after the service was over.
One of those alums was Hannah, whose work with Tapestry I was vaguely aware of from the organization’s excellent social media presence. In the course of me learning more about Tapestry, and Hannah learning more about my interest in digital storytelling, we realized we might have stumbled upon a potential collaboration. Hannah shared that digital stories about the foster youth experience were already an important component of Tapestry’s training practices.
Eight days later, in an email with subject line “Lunch or coffee sometime soon”, I wrote,
I really enjoyed our conversation at the service last week, and I’m excited about the prospect of collaborating. (As expected, my advisor was excited too!)
That meeting would happen on November 19 and lay the groundwork for our research-practice partnership.
Data collection
- Field notes?: No
- Audio recording?: No
- Photographs?: No
Significant observations
- Tapestry’s interest in digital storytelling was the point of connection.
Interpretive insights
- Conversation took place at a church but wasn’t about church.
Implications / reflections
- A challenge for audio ethnography is “getting tape” from important moments before human subjects vetting; I wish I’d have thought to record a voice memo.
Image credit: “Winchester” by Herry Lawford via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). For illustration only—not a research artifact.